Susan McDougal, a woman who spent almost two years behind bars for refusing to testify against former President Bill Clinton, spoke Friday night to Pope County Democrats about the lack of moral balance in politics and why it is important to do the right thing.

McDougal began her speech at Arkansas Tech University's Chambers Cafeteria by telling the experience of when she was first arrested.

"I knew it was a better thing to go to jail than to cooperate with (prosecutor) Kenneth Starr," she said. "I knew that I would be in a better place, and I had made plans for the worst possible thing that could happen to me."

She talked about being handcuffed and hearing the clinking of the chains when she walked.

"It was a hard time for me privately, as well as in the public light," McDougal said. "Because during that time, it was really the first time on our national scale that a political thing like Whitewater also became one man's testament of religion."

She said she remembered how Starr would talk about his Christianity and his drive to find the truth. She called his comments "smoke screens," because the verdict in the Whitewater case was: "no wrongdoing on the part of the Clintons," which she said Starr wanted her to lie about.

McDougal said the focus of her book, "The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk," written in 2002, is not necessarily about her imprisonment, but rather about the division of the United States.

"We're now the most divided our county has been since the war between the states," she said. "Divided, they say, by morality. I believe we're not as divided by morality as we have been divided purposely from one another and led astray by false issues of morality.

"When did our family values and our private issues become the providence of our government and would be actually voted upon? ... I believe that we've lost moral balance, not improved it. Not only in how we've behaved in our national economy, but in the terms of our poor, our sick, our elderly, our children, our immigrant population, and even in our foreign policy."

McDougal discussed with local Democrats what she believed should be in moral debate, such as military recruitment in poor neighborhoods and the fact that almost 90 percent of people in prison have been homeless at one point.

She explained while she was in prison - two days before Christmas, when she was in cells with the women on murderer's row for civil contempt - a nun came to sing Christmas carols to the women.

"There were no cameras there," she said. "No one knew she was there but us. And in my heart, I knew that there were still good people who don't wait to tell the camera, or to tell the story of 'smoke and mirrors' while they're doing something else."

Olin Cook, chairman of the Pope County Democratic Committee, said Friday night's event was to inspire the Democrats and get an early start for the 2006 governor's election, even though there is no official Democratic candidate at this time.

"If we don't start now, we won't make it next year," he said. "And we need help every day."

Attorney General Mike Beebe, who spoke during last weekend's Russellville Chamber of Commerce First Friday luncheon, is rumored to be considering a gubernatorial candidacy next year.

Backgound

McDougal was tried and convicted in May 1996 on Whitewater-related fraud charges. She was sentenced to two years in prison, but before she could serve any of that time, she was sentenced with an additional 18 months in jail on civil contempt charges when she refused to answer further questions from the Whitewater prosecutors.

In July 1998, she was released from jail early, after serving the entire contempt sentence and four months of the Whitewater sentence.

McDougal was then acquitted of embezzlement charges unrelated to her Whitewater activity, though her defense accused Starr of trying to get McDougal's prosecution to force her to testify against Clinton.